


Garlic

by OwlsandOwls



Series: Plastic Bags and Pasta Sauce [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Engagement, Fighting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, pasta sauce my dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 04:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13159578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwlsandOwls/pseuds/OwlsandOwls
Summary: “There’s garlic in this.”Derek looks up, eyebrows pulling together. Stiles is glaring at him now.“Is that a...problem?”Stiles whole face drops into furious disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”





	Garlic

**Author's Note:**

> So here's a thing?

They’re arguing about pasta sauce when Derek decides that he’s going to ask Stiles to marry him.

Pasta sauce.

Derek is humming along with the radio, standing over the stove on a Tuesday at 6:27 and holding the garlic salt above a bubbling pot of tomatoes and olive oil when Stiles bursts in, all loud, heavy boots and ripped rain coat sliding against itself. He drips on the hardwood, and gets mud on the white walls when he kicks off his boots. There’s a sponge under the sink just for Stiles’ boot/wall mud, and Derek sets the garlic powder on the counter to bend over and grab it. He gets it wet, and then walks over, already dropping down to scrub at the wall.

Normally, he’d ask Stiles how his day was, or what he did, but he can feel something prickly in the air. Stiles is someone who feels things very deeply, everything lighting him up inside. Being loved by him was like drowning sometimes. But the anger or lust or sadness under his skin is so concentrated that it flavors everything around him, to the point that you can taste it on your tongue, and feel the press of it against the back of your throat.

Tonight, Stiles is mad. He smells like sweat and black coffee, gritty and volatile. His movements are harsh and impatient, and Derek hears the pull of seams when he pulls off his coat and hangs it up.

The mud wipes off easy, and Derek drops the sponge onto the welcome mat so he can stand and pull Stiles into a hug. And Stiles fights it for a second, shoving back and grumbling and stepping on Derek’s feet with his damp socks, but without warning he melts. He doesn’t hug Derek back, exactly, just sort of leans against him and breathes for a few minutes. Derek keeps his arms wrapped around Stiles’ shoulders, fingers brushing back and forth across the fabric of his shirt. This is just what they do, and it works. Helps.

Stiles jerks back after about two minutes, and walks away, starting up the stairs. Derek watches him stomp up and into their bedroom, and then listens to the shower turn on, listens to Stiles’ clothes hitting the floor. After a second, he can smell lavender shampoo. He snorts to himself, and then turns back and walks to the kitchen.

Derek boils the pasta, store-bought tortellini, and listens to the soft noises of Stiles showering and calming himself down. Maybe he missed a deadline, or an interview went south. Derek doesn’t get why Stiles works at such a po-dunk little paper, but then there’s days where he comes home smiling all soft and kissing Derek into the bedroom the second he makes it through the door. He likes it there, usually. Plus, he follows the crime beat, and that means a lot less hapless reporters snooping around Pack related crime scenes.

They make a good team: Derek, an unassuming Sheriff’s deputy, and Stiles, an eccentric and enigmatic reporter. Erica calls it cute. Derek wouldn’t ever say it out loud, but he loves how simple it is. How they coexist.

Stiles comes stomping back down the stairs just as Derek’s pouring sauce over both bowls. The acrid anger and general pissiness in the air signals his arrival, astringent when it mixes with the sweetness of the tomato sauce. Derek focuses on the lavender body wash underneath all of it. He carries the bowls over to the breakfast nook (“Breakfast nook, Derek? It’s a fucking table.” “Shut up and move it to the left.” “Dude. Why is the human moving the table, and the werewolf supervising?” “Because the human doesn’t appreciate the concept of a breakfast nook. Left.”) and sets them down. Stiles flops into his chair, and glares at the tortellini like it’s personally offended him on some deep, deep level. Derek almost snorts, but just sits down. He settles in and manages three full bites before all hell breaks loose.

“There’s garlic in this.”

Derek looks up, eyebrows pulling together. Stiles is glaring at him now. “Is that a...problem?”

Stiles whole face drops into furious disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

His fork hits the side of the plate with a heavy clang, and Derek sits back in his chair, trying to find whatever the fuck this is about somewhere in Stiles’ shining eyes. “I’m not the one losing his shit over pasta.”

Stiles seems to crack a little bit. He grabs his bowl in one hand, shoves back from the table, grabs Derek’s, and then walks over and drops them both into the sink.

Derek can hear the ceramic shatter against itself.

“Stiles!” He leaps up from the table, chair scrapping across the tile in a mark he just knows he’ll have to scrub out later. “What the fuck?”

Stiles looks around incredulously, like the cabinets are going to back him up on whatever the fuck this is about. He turns back to Derek, practically seething. “How much fucking _garlic_ did you put in that?”

It’s surreal, yelling, “Three teaspoons!” at your boyfriend in anger, but Derek’s always felt like his life was about two inches to the left of normal, anyway.

It’s even weirder having your boyfriend scream, “Three teaspoons!?” back at you with the force of about 38 fucking hurricanes. It’s so weird, that Derek starts to laugh.

Which does not help the situation. In any way. At all.

Stiles looks at him like he just slapped him or something. There’s a half a second of silence, and then Stiles whirls around, and grabs the pot of sauce still simmering on the stove. He turns back, gestures to the whole pot, and then stomps towards the front door. Every one of his movements is single and harsh and Derek’s terrified he’s gonna burn himself with fucking hot tomato paste, so he follows him into the living room, through the door, and watches as Stiles pours the entire pot onto their fucking porch stairs. Derek blinks.

“Are you fucking kidding.”

Stiles throws the pot at the ground and flinches when the metal hits the gravel with a harsh clang. Derek’s ears rattle a little. Turning back, Stiles glares with everything he has in his 167 lb body for a moment before yanking his cell out of his pocket and tapping harshly at the screen for second. He nods, and then shoves it out at Derek, who takes it instantly, looking at the screen.

“You can’t eat garlic, you fucking idiot,” Stiles snaps before Derek can process the image on the screen. “It’s bad for your heart.”

Derek’s eyes focus on a scanned in page of the bestiary, and he muddles through the ancient French, using the two years he took in high school, until things start to make a little sense.

_“Garlic affects the vascular system in canine beings.”_

There’s a little illustration of a garlic clove with an X over it in faded red, and another of an anatomical heart. Derek looks up from the phone, face a mixture of fond exasperation and confusion and frustration and so much love it stings just a little. “Stiles,” he says, soft, almost laughing. “Stiles, I’m not gonna die because I eat pasta sauce.”

Stiles rolls his eyes and snatches his phone away. “It’s bad for you!” He says, defensive. “And the last fucking thing I need is more people in my life with fucking heart problems.”

There it is.

Stiles’ shoulders drop and he acts like he’s doing something on his phone, stubborn until the bitter end, but Derek knows there’s nothing there. He reaches up and takes it out of his hands, and levels him with a look Peter likes to call “mothering” when he thinks Derek can’t hear.

It’s ridiculous. And silly. And _stupid_ , but it’s Stiles, who just cares so much about everyone all the time that it eats him up sometimes. Derek’s heart swells, pushing out against his ribs until he can’t breathe right.

“Hey,” he says, stepping close. Stiles just keeps looking at the ground with his eyebrows pinched together and his lips pursed. Derek sighs, and pulls him into a hug, feeling Stiles whole body shudder and mold into his the second it’s allowed. His face goes into Derek’s shoulder, it’s favorite place to hide when he’s embarrassed.

“Just don’t eat the pasta sauce.” Derek feels Stiles’ lips form the words through the material of his Henley. “Like. Just. Can we not eat the pasta sauce?”

“We won’t eat the pasta sauce,” Derek whispers back, hands curled tight around Stiles’ back in a way he’s not sure he deserves, all the time. Stiles nods against him, and they stay like that for long enough that a few birds flap down to peck around in the tomato sauce slowly dripping down their stairs.

 

Later, after microwave oatmeal, when Stiles is inside working on the story that had him home in one of the Top 5 Worst Stiles Moods of the year, Derek’s goes out to hose off the porch. The surrealism of the situation makes him laugh. He’s just chuckling to himself, holding a garden hose in the dark and watering the stairs in front of their house. He glances back in through their front window, and Stiles is on their couch, laptop balanced precariously on a knee, face flushed. He’s muttering to himself. It’s beautiful. No one, not since before, has loved him like that. Cared about him like that. Worried about him enough to stain his porch with pasta sauce. Standing there, hose getting his bare feet wet, Derek feels something slide into place in his chest.

The red stains, and he’ll need to come out with a sander or something in the morning, but he gets the worst of it before he leaves to pick up gas station ice cream and stop by the old storage garage to dig around his mother’s charred jewelry box.

The ring’s a little big, but he thinks it’ll work.


End file.
